Superman: The Lost Years Continued
by JasonSpidey
Summary: Continuing with the years of Clark Kent's life between Smallville and Superman. Clark may just have well found where he belongs...but it's not necessarily where you think. I suggest reading Superman: The Lost Years first, but it's not necessary.
1. Belonging

Susan had never been quite as scared in her life as she was just now.

She'd seen a lot in her nineteen years, far more than any nineteen-year old girl from Pennsylvania should ever see. Running away from an abusive, alcoholic stepfather at fifteen, she'd spent weeks wandering the countryside before a man named Jonas had offered to help her get back on her feet. And at first, it was a dream come true for her. He'd brought her to New York City, just like she'd always wanted to do. He'd bought her beautiful clothes, jewelry and shoes – the kinds of things she'd always dreamed of. And when he asked her to do a little favor for him, just to sleep with another man on camera, it hadn't seemed like such a horrible price to pay. The other guy was kind of cute, after all, and Jonas had pretty much saved her life. It was only sex, after all. Her stepfather had robbed her of whatever virginity she once might have had; she had nothing to protect anymore.

For a little over a year, she'd made movies for Jonas, sleeping with all sorts of men and women alike. She'd gotten used to it, even come to like it after a while. Then, one day, she started to feel uncomfortable during one of the scenes. It wasn't a moral thing; her crotch felt like it was on fire whenever anyone touched her there. She'd gone to the doctor, and the test results had sent her heart falling: herpes. Nothing that a little medication couldn't suppress, but she didn't exactly have health insurance to pay for it. More importantly, though, it was the kiss of death for her porn star career. Nobody wanted to work with someone who's got a disease, Jonas had told her as he took back all of the things he'd ever bought her. She begged and pleaded to let her stay, but it was just business, he'd said. Nothing personal.

Susan soon found herself cast into the deeper, darker parts of the illicit sex trades, until she found herself where she was today – a hundred-dollar whore working out of a house in the lower Bronx. Her pimp, Fitzie, had been "managing" her for over a year now – she still found it easier to think of the man as a "manager" rather than what he really was, because accepting that would mean she'd have to accept what she'd become – had a nasty tendency to beat his girls when they did wrong, but he also made sure that nobody else ever laid a hand on them – security which she was willing to trade the occasional black eye for. Things weren't all that good, she'd thought, but they could be worse. She could be dead.

Recently, however, Fitzie had begun making arrangements with all sorts of darker, shadier criminals, the likes of which Susan could only guess at. She only knew that most of them spoke some foreign language – Russian? Italian? Arabic? – and that they tended to carry weapons far larger than the nine-millimeter Glock Fitzie kept tucked into his pants. Fitzie's tasks had started off small – drug-running, money-laundering – but as time had gone on, things had gotten worse and worse. It wasn't until tonight, though, that Susan had realized how bad things were. She had been entertaining a client in her room when Fitzie's second, Wayne, had busted in and ordered the man to clear out before telling Susan to stay in her room and keep quiet. He'd seemed spooked – and Wayne never seemed spooked. So Susan followed him down the hallway and down the stairs to the basement, where she found a quiet, dark corner to hide in near the staircase. No sooner had she settled in when the back door connecting the alley to the basement opened up and three large foreign men rushed inside, carrying something in their arms. As they dropped it on the floor, Susan's heart leapt to her throat and she forced herself to stifle a scream. Not something.

Someone.

A young, blond girl, her face battered and bruised, lay unconscious on the concrete floor. From her clothes, she had money; from her body, she couldn't have been over sixteen. Susan had the strangest feeling she knew her from somewhere, but she couldn't place it. She was wracking her brain when Fitzie descended the stairs and let out a loud shriek at the sight.

"Oh, hell no! You did not just do what I think you did!" Fitzie gestured frightenedly in the direction of the beaten girl on his floor. "Get her out of here right this goddamn _instant_!"

The big foreign man merely shook his head solemnly. "Zis is the way ze boss wants it, Fitzgerald. Here and now. Ze trail is too hot; ze police will have us if we don't dispose of her now," he slurred through his foreign accent

The color rushed from Fitzie's face. "You can't be serious. You cannot be fucking serious! No. You are not going to whack the governor's daughter on my motherfucking floor!"

Susan was shocked; even in his worst times, Fitzie made a point of not swearing in front of people. He'd always said that his mother had taught him never to swear, no matter what – and it was the one lesson he'd taken to heart. But she knew he had as good a reason to now as he ever would; he was right in his identification of the girl. Eileen Spitzer, the daughter of the governor of New York. Susan had seen her in the paper once or twice, on page six of the Post.

The larger man shook his head. "No, Fitzgerald – we will not kill her."

"You will."

Fitzie shook his own head violently. "No way in hell, Stefan. No way I'm going to kill her. This is your mess, you take care of it."

"If you do this, my employer will extend his full protection to you. He is prepared to bring you into his inner circle if you go through with this. No more two-bit whores. No more street drugs. The real life.

"If you, however, choose not to…" Stefan's point was made by the simultaneous cocking of two machine pistols in Fitzie's direction. The message was obvious: kill or be killed. Susan fought off the sudden urge to vomit that had swept over her.

Fitzie, his hand shaking, reached into his pocket and pulled out his silver-barreled Glock. He stepped over the girl's body, placing himself above her chest with his gun arm extended towards her face. The barrel was three feet away from her head; nobody could miss at that range. Still, he was forced to use his other hand to steady the gun on the girl's face. Susan, from her hiding spot, could see the girl moan softly as she started to awaken, could see the sweat drip down Fitzie's face, could see the mobsters with their machine guns waiting for the bullet. She closed her eyes, covered her ears and said a silent prayer for a miracle.

The room seemed to explode.

Glass flew everywhere as the tiny windows near the roof shattered and something plowed through the double-gauge steel doors from the alley into the room with enough force to make the building shudder. Susan's eyes flew open – just to see the last ting she ever expected.

There, standing in the middle of the room, stood Indiana Jones.

The leather jacket-and-fedora clad man's appearance surprised everyone in the room, from Susan to Fitzie and the mobsters. Fitzie, in shock, just stared at the man, his pistol still pointed towards the girl's head. The mobsters, who had dove for cover, looked out at the stranger in awe.

In the blink of an eye, the stranger effortlessly smacked the gun out of Fitzie's hand and into the air; it clattered against the ceiling before falling back to the cement only a few feet from Susan's hiding place. Fitzie, in a rare moment of intelligence, decided that this would be a good time to turn tail and beat a hasty retreat – but before he could even turn ten degrees, the man's palm lashed out and caught Fitzie in the solar plexus, sending him skidding across the floor on his ass before smacking into a wall.

Two of the mobsters, realizing that offense was probably their best course, leapt up from their hiding places and opened up with their guns, spraying bullets in the direction of the mysterious man. Their Mac-11's chattered wildly as they each unleashed a steady stream of lead in the direction of the man, but he didn't move out of the way; instead, he seemed to blur with motion in one place, his arms vibrating fast enough to be all but unseen.

_He's catching the bullets, _Susan thought with irrational clarity, given the circumstances. _He's catching the bullets in his hands._

Whether the two mobsters came to this conclusion or not, they didn't let up off their triggers until their guns clicked dry on empty magazines. The stranger smiled as he held up his fists, then opened them to his sides; sixty deformed bullets fell to the ground with a tinkle. He hadn't missed one. The man's eyes suddenly glowed a supernatural red, and a beam of reddish heat haze suddenly shot forth from each pupil into the gun of the first man, causing him to let out a scream as he dropped it, his hand burnt from the conducted heat. The stranger turned his head to follow suit to the second mobster's gun – but he'd already dropped it of his own accord, and was now holding his hands high above his head.

Stefan took advantage of the mysterious man's sudden distraction to make a break for the shattered remains of the door, but he'd barely made it three steps before the stranger shot across the room - sending his fedora flying - and placed himself into an intercept course directly between the gangster and the doorway. Stefan slammed into the taller man at a full sprint, but the heavy mobster's mass seemed, inexplicably, no match for the other fellow – he bounced off "Indiana Jones" like a baseball bounces off oak, slumping backwards and collapsing to the ground.

The stranger leaned down over Stefan, who despite his dizzying encounter with the man's body was still coherent enough to show the clear signs of fear. The taller man lowered his face to the mobster's.

"Now, have you learned your lesson?" The taller man's voice was patronizing, but the gangster clearly didn't care. Stefan nodded emphatically.

"You know that kidnapping people is wrong, right?"

Stefan again nodded so heard it seemed like his head would fall off.

"Good," "Indy" said, before tapping Stefan on the forehead with two fingers and enough force to knock him out.

The man rose to his feet, still staring at Stefan below him. He shook his head, and sighed, seemingly unable to comprehend what would make people do something like this. He glanced over at the girl, who was starting to stir, when out of the corner of his eye, he caught a movement. From near the stairs.

The bullet from a 9 millimeter handgun travels at 1,280 feet per second. In this case, it had to travel about six feet from the chamber of the gun to the man's face, a journey which would take it about 0.0047 seconds. In that time, the stranger's survival instincts kicked into gear, sensing the sudden danger and bringing his right arm up to protect his face as he ducked away. The bullet reached the man's forearm –

-and ricocheted off, leaving no lasting effect other than a tear through the leather of the jacket.

Susan, shocked, just let the still-smoking gun drop to the floor. She had figured that by getting the drop on the man, he wouldn't have time to see it and dodge. She hadn't counted on him having no need to.

The man, to her surprise, didn't attack her – he just glanced down at his sleeve, turning it right and left to survey the damage. "Damn," he said as he looked at the tear before glancing towards Susan. "What did you do _that_ for?"

"You…killed Fitzie…" was all she could stumble out. She'd seen him throw her pimp across the room.

"Who?" the man asked incredulously; when she gestured to the man slumped against the wall in the purple suit, the stranger just chuckled. "Oh, him? No, he's just passed out. He's still breathing," he said in a strangely reassuring way.

The stranger reached down and picked up his fedora, placing it back on his head before gently scooping up the governor's daughter. "Now, if you don't mind, this girl needs to see a doctor. If I were you, I wouldn't stick around here – the cops will probably follow the trail out here, even if the girl is safe."

He was turning to leave, when Susan's voice made him stop. "Wait!" He looked back at her. "Who…are you?" she couldn't help but ask.

He smiled. "A friend."

And with a wink from beneath the shadow of his brim, he stepped up the stairs into the alleyway and disappeared.

--------------------------------------- 

Hours later, Clark Kent was still fingering the bullet hole in his old bomber jacket.

The girl had ended up being fine; though he hadn't stuck around the hospital to find out, he'd listened in from across the street as the doctors at Beth Israel had checked her over. He'd been relieved to hear that her injuries were superficial; for the hours he'd been tracking the kidnappers down, Clark's head had been filled with thoughts about what unspeakable acts the men might be performing on the poor girl who'd done now wrong other than happen to have a politically powerful father.

_Not that it would have mattered if she had done anything wrong, though, _he told himself as he often did. _Even if she'd killed somebody, she still would have deserved finding. She still would have deserved saving._

He'd gone back to check up on the men he'd left unconscious in the whorehouse after he was sure that the girl was okay; as he'd expected, the NYPD were already there, taking statements and making arrests. Clark knew that the mobsters would talk about what happened to them, if only to try and make themselves look like the victims; after all, getting beaten up by some guy off the street doesn't make for the most threatening-sounding mobster, even in a jury's eyes – and even if the man could catch bullets out of thin air. Hence, the Indiana Jones getup; while a few open-minded cops might be able to believe that someone had smashed through the doors and moved fast enough to catch speeding bullets, they'd be a lot less likely to believe that a movie character did it. Plus, the fedora had hid his face a bit in the cramped, dark lighting – a fact which Clark hadn't realized until he arrived. Everything had worked out for the best.

But he still couldn't get his mind off the bullet hole in his jacket.

_I really liked this thing, too. Now, I'm either gonna have to walk around with a big tear in the sleeve or I'll have to bring it home and have Mom sew it up, but then it'll have a patch on it, and she'll ask me what I was doing with it, which will get into a whole debate over why I'm running around disguised as Harrison Ford fighting crime while I have a perfectly good costume sitting in my room that won't get torn up. _

He knew his mother had a good point, too – he did have a very nice uniform hidden under his shoes in a case in his closet. But he still couldn't shake that feeling that putting on that suit was something he wasn't ready for yet. Clark Kent had gotten to know himself very well over all his years; as a farm kid in rural America, as a somewhat unusual teenager, and as an alien from another planet, Clark had come to understand himself, because he'd never had anybody who could quite understand him otherwise. Sometimes he wondered if everybody felt this way, like there was nobody else out there who could really comprehend you. His parents had insisted that was the case; that his situation, though certainly special, was really just the same thing everyone went through.

Clark just wasn't sure whether he could believe them.

But he wasn't sure of a lot of things. He'd always thought of Smallville as just a stepping stone, someplace for him to grow up but not a place for him to make his destiny. After he'd left, though, he began wondering that maybe that was where he belonged.

_But it isn't, _he told himself. _You never really belonged there. Out here, in the city, away from all those social woes and small-town problems…this is where I belong. This is where I can be myself. How many tall buildings are there to leap in Kansas? And where else can you find a view like this?_

From his perch atop the Chrysler Building, the city did indeed seem beautiful. The towers of midtown rose up alongside of him, with the taller buildings of downtown visible past the Empire State Building's patriotic light scheme. The world around him seemed to glow amber with the light from a hundred thousand sodium-vapor lamps and a million headlights, the glow stretching off in every direction. It was like standing in the middle of the galaxy, watching stars stream off in every direction. The sounds and smells of Manhattan in early September blew past Clark, and he closed his eyes to suck it in. He cast his arms to his sides and held himself out to the wind, letting it blow past him as he smiled broadly. In that moment, all his doubts, all his troubles faded away like dust in the wind, leaving only...peace. There was nowhere like this place in the whole world, he thought as he tucked his hat under his arm and stepped off into the sky. Nowhere at all.


	2. Normalcy

Clark found himself waking, as he usually did, to the gentle sound of birds chirping. It wasn't the sound coming from outside his window; rather, it came from his "natural sounds" alarm clock that Clark considered one of the smartest investments he'd made for college. The clock also gently increased the light in the room too, so Clark usually ended up – true to his country roots – waking fifteen minutes before the actual alarm went off. The morning ran as usual: wake up at 6:45, take a shower in the bathroom he shared with his suitemate – who never rose before eight o'clock - eat a nice breakfast of OJ, Froot Loops and whatever fresh fruit happened to be in season for that time of year, before heading off to classes. Clark's patterns tended to contrast with those of his roommate in such a way that he rarely saw the other guy; he woke late, did most of his work in the library, and only seemed to use their room as a place to crash between the hours of 2 and 8 am. Though he hadn't seen much of him – he could barely remember his last name – he already felt like he knew more than enough about him. He tended to stay out drinking vodka or rum, and even once tequila, judging by the odors Clark's nose picked up when he walked into the kitchenette in the morning. He was fairly promiscuous, but didn't seem to have any single girlfriend; it had only been three weeks since classes started, and already Clark had smelled the distinct odors from four different women.

And a man.

He knew that the guy had a tendency to snore when he slept on his left side, that he had a right ear which tended to produce drier earwax, that his sweat glands clogged easily after working out, and that he wore contact lenses.

_I really know too much about the guy, considering I can't even get his name right. Brad…Sanderson? Saunderson? Saunderton? Christ. _He glanced down next to his hand on the counter, where his roommate's most recent copy of Maxim magazine lay sprawled where it had been left the night before. _Saunderson. I was right the first time. _Clark took a mental snapshot of the address label on it so he wouldn't forget the name again before reaching for his cereal from the shelf.

As he sat down to eat, Clark turned on the radio to listen in to the news – not too loud, so that he didn't wake his roommate. Clark hated being woken up in the middle of the night when he was asleep, and he figured he owed the other fellow at least the same courtesy.

"In local news, Governor Eliot Spitzer's daughter Eileen is recuperating at Beth Israel after her miraculous escape from capture by the Russian mob last night. Police say they are unclear as to how the girl escaped from her captors. Police Commissioner Rucka announced this morning that those immediately responsible for the kidnapping are currently in police custody after a raid on the brothel where the girl was being kept. It's 7:50, and you're listening to WNYC – New York's public rad—"

Clark clicked off the radio with a silent curse as he shoveled a couple massive spoonfuls of Loops into his mouth, downed the last of his OJ and dropped the dishes into the sink. No time to do them now; he'd have to do them later, and hope his roommate would understand. He shoved his books into his old red backpack and started for the door – only to turn back and dash into his room. From his nightstand, he scooped up his pair of wire-rimmed eyeglasses and slid them over his face, blinking as he did so. They didn't change how he saw the world; the glass was just there to make them look authentic, not bend the light going into his eyes. Nevertheless, he knew they were essential. He needed a track record of wearing glasses if he ever wanted to use that costume hidden in his room, so he'd started wearing them upon his arrival in Manhattan. He glanced at himself in his bedroom mirror, smoothing a couple wrinkles out of his red shirt. _Not too shabby, _he thought before a bit of blood rushed to his cheeks in his moment of immodesty. But he didn't have time to stand around and blush; he glanced at the clock and headed for the door.

---------------------------------------------------------- 

It was a beautiful day in the Big Apple, the fourth one in a row. On the NYU campus, Abercrombie t-shirts and American Eagle khaki shorts seemed to be the outfit of the day. Clark, as he strolled out of his last class of the day, frowned momentarily at what seemed like his poor choice of outfit selection after seeing what everyone else was wearing. Physically, it didn't really matter what he wore in terms of temperature; he was comfortable in any temperature range the planet Earth would reach, from the icefields of the Arctic to the hottest rainforest. But the sunlight…the sunlight was a different matter altogether. For Clark, the touch of sunlight was like the breath of a lover on his skin, sending a feeling of utter euphoria throughout his body. Whenever he got the chance, he loved to immerse himself in it, whether on the beach, in the fields of home or thirty thousand feet above the face of the world. Clothing didn't cut off all the feeling, but it limited it – the more layers, the duller the effect. So, Clark tried to choose the outfit which would give him as much exposure as possible without arising suspicion. Today, it seems, he had been off.

In any case, he rolled up his sleeves and headed across Washington Square Park towards the cafeteria to get some lunch and meet up with a very special someone.

As he crossed the square, he heard a familiar pair of feet fall into step behind him and pick up pace, trying to sneak up on him from behind. He didn't turn to confront his pursuer; rather, he kept walking straight ahead, a smile creeping across his lips. He picked up his pace, gliding ahead faster and faster until he was striding along as quickly as he long legs would allow without breaking into a trot. The smile crept a little wider as he heard the pursuing footsteps, unable to match his gate, broke into a run and his pursuer ran around and cut him off at the pass.

"Very funny, Clark," Chloe Sullivan said, hands placed on her hips and giving him a scolding look. Clark couldn't help but break out into a grin at her playful indignance.

"We go through this three times a week, Clo. Don't you ever get sick of it?" he asked.

Chloe gave him her brightest fake smile, a gesture that would have left most authentic smiles packing their bags in defeat. "One of the most important traits of a good reporter is that they never give up."

"You're a regular pit bull, all right," Clark tacked on.

Chloe feigned sadness, and Clark rolled his eyes playfully. "I'm sorry, Chloe." He said dramatically.

Chloe instantly brightened, and together the two of them headed off in the direction of the cafeteria again. "Apology accepted. Now, I want to hear all about this whole 'saving the governor's daughter' thing, from start to finish. All the details."

Clark shook his head. "At least let me get some food first. I'm starving. Me no talkie well on empty tankie."

It was Chloe's turn to roll her eyes. "God damn it, Clark," she sighed. "Why don't you leave the witty dialogue to the professionals?"

"Then what am I supposed to quip when I'm saving the world, farmboy axioms?"

---------------------------------------------------------------- 

Over pizza, French fries and assorted fruit, Clark proceeded to recount the previous evenings entire events to Chloe. He told her about how he heard over a police car's radio that the governor's daughter had been kidnapped before it had hit the news, and had tailed one of the detectives to the scene of the abduction from the rooftops. He'd watched through the windows as the cops had examined the crime scene, the governor's thirty-ninth floor apartment on 58th Street, and overheard them mention the name of a Russian mobster, Stefan Andreski, whose fingerprints they'd found at the scene, as well as the model of car – a maroon Lexus – he'd happened to be driving. Clark had overheard various hoods mention the mobster as a mid-level enforcer for one of the bigger Russian mob bosses in the Tri-State Area, and knew that he tended to work mostly on the far upper West side – north of about 110th street. So, seeing as how it was getting dark enough and the clouds consistent enough that he could go airborne without easily being identified, he took to the sky, flying eight thousand feet above the city and surveying every block west of 5th avenue between Columbia and the Bronx. It was on his eight pass that he found the car, pulling into the alleyway behind what looked like an old, somewhat worn-down tenement. He'd seen Stefan and his men pull the girl out of the back seat; a quick scan of the building with his x-ray vision had revealed that it was a pretty average whorehouse, without anyone else likely to cause him trouble. He had been just about to swoop in and save the day when he realized he probably needed at least some kind of disguise. This wasn't like breaking up a bad drug deal or stopping a mugging, he explained to Chloe; with something this big involving people this important, people would hear about it, and people would talk. Hence, the Indiana Jones costume. (Chloe accidentally snorted some of her water up her nose, she laughed so hard, when he revealed that part of the story.) It took him about a minute to zip back to his room and get the hat and jacket, but about three minutes to get back, because the hat (which he'd tucked under his jacket in order to keep the wind from tearing it apart) kept falling out, and he had to swoop back and get it again. Finally, he reached the whorehouse and smashed through the doors, disarming and knocking out the gangsters and saving the governor's daughter.

"Of course, that didn't stop one of the prostitutes from taking a potshot at me when I wasn't expecting it," Clark added as he ate the last bite of his pizza.

"So?" Chloe asked, not understanding why this would be a problem.

"So, I wasn't ready, and I didn't have a chance to catch the bullet. Stupid thing tore right through the sleeve of my jacket. I really like that jacket, and now it's got this ugly chunk taken out of the arm. Did I ever tell you the story about that jacket?"

Chloe shook her head, and Clark continued. "It was my father's. My _biological_ father's, from when he came to Earth back in the '60s."

Chloe placed her food back down on her tray, intrigued. "How did you end up with it, then?"

"He gave it to my grandpa when he was on the run from the law – Jor-El, not my dad's dad. My grandpa had it in a trunk in the attic for forty years, until we ended up digging it out one day. Every time I wear it…it's the one piece of my father that I can understand. All the experience I've had with him – or whatever passes for him – he's been telling me what to do, forcing me around. But when he wore that quote…he was just a kid, like me. Just a kid sent to some other world for some sort of…spirit quest, or something, who happened to fall in love with the wrong girl and have his heart broken because of it." Clark's voice began to take on a downward cast as the memory of the first girl he'd ever loved trickled into his mind again. "That's somebody I can relate to."

"But that's all in the past," he said, his voice perking up again as he stood and picked up his tray, Chloe following suit. "Right now, it's a beautiful day in this beautiful city. I'm with a beautiful girl-" he put his arm around her – "on this most beautiful day of them all, Friday. And right now, I would like nothing better than to take a little stroll with her up towards Times Square. Maybe hit up some ice cream along the way. But mostly…just be glad to be alive."

Chloe wrapped her arm around him in return, reciprocating the gesture as the two of them stepped outside. "Sounds good."


	3. Thoughts

With the darkness, the city came alive.

As night fell on Manhattan, millions of lights flickered on, bringing artificial day to the otherwise conquering night. From the giant colored lights atop the Empire State Building to the twenty-five watt bulbs hanging in the dingiest apartments, each one did a little bit to push back the blackness until the city seemed to glow all on its own. Clark loved the night here, just as much as he loved the day. Differently, though. The daytime had that all-powerful sun, the golden light which gave Clark the gifts that he'd come to know and love with the years. In the daytime, you knew what was what, and you could be at peace with it. But at night, things were different. It felt like there was electricity in the New York air once the sun went down, like a switch had been thrown. Nighttime was when the more interesting sides of the city started to come out, when people let themselves go a little more than they did during the day. Clark wasn't entirely sure, but he'd always found himself less tired come late night when he came to a big city like New York. Back in Kansas, the day was usually over by ten o'clock; the night when his family was doing anything other than getting ready for bed when the clock hit double digits was the rare one. But here, things never stopped; the city was just as alive at midnight as it was at noon, still noisy and powerful. Clark liked the way it made him feel to be out and about at night in the city. In the darkness, the costume in his closet seemed to nag at the back of his mind a little less; in the darkness, he could feel a bit more free to…express himself without fear of exposure.

But he also enjoyed it on a more human level, too. He liked the feeling of hanging out with other people that came with nighttime, liked going to clubs with friends or just spending hours walking, talking and laughing as they strolled up and down the streets of Manhattan. Sometimes, one of his and Chloe's friends would find out about a party going on at some house out in Brooklyn or Queens, and they would all get together and get psyched up to go, hop on the subway and take it forty minutes out – only to get to the party, and find out it was a bust. Clark loved those sorts of things the best. Adventures, things going other than the way you planned it and you have to roll with the punches and think on your feet. Those were the times he loved the most. Then there were the nights when he and Chloe would just walk through Central Park together, and she'd pull herself close to him and smile up at him, and he could feel the warmth of her body against his invulnerable skin, the gentle pressure of her body touching his, and he found himself wanting to grab her up in his arms and leap into the sky, to make love to her a mile above the city, floating on air. Those nights were the most dangerous, and because of that, the most fun. Despite his feelings of desire, he knew he couldn't give in to them. He couldn't put Chloe through the old song-and-dance routine that he knew she was so sick of; though he'd never heard her say it directly, he knew she'd spent their time apart getting over him, and that now she was ready to move on with her life. He didn't want to drag her back again, not when she'd come so far. So he held his tongue and willed the blood back into his brain on those nighttime strolls, waiting until he returned to the solitude and darkness of his room later that night to find release. But it was getting harder.

Nevertheless, Clark loved the night. Tonight, though, was not one of those nights for adventure; rather, it was a night to hang with his friends. The program of events for that night was simple enough: hang around his friend Mike's (and also his friend Josh's, and Joe's, and Turner's) room and watch some TV, kick back a few, maybe play some cards. It was fun enough – except for the fact that Clark didn't drink. Even though alcohol didn't affect him in any way, and even though he was only eight months from turning twenty-one, he'd long since decided to wait until he reached the age of legality to drink. It was as much a sign of respect to the laws as anything else, a way of showing that the rules of law bound him just as much as anyone else despite his abilities. But that often meant that, as the night went along and his friends become more and more tanked, he found himself losing interest in the evening. Chloe usually didn't get as drunk as the other kids (he still thought of himself and everyone else his own age as a kid), but she didn't hesitate to imbibe, either. She was smart, though; she was one of the few people who knew where to draw the line, and she'd never come close to revealing his secret. Clark trusted Chloe, he really did – he trusted her as much as he trusted any other human being. He just didn't know how far he could trust any human after too many bottles of Bud.

Being careful not to disturb his friends watching the movie, Clark rose to his feet and reached for his boots, putting them on. Chloe, sitting a couple feet away, turned to him. He noticed the extra tenth of a second it took her eyes to dilate to the reduced light when she looked his way, and guessed she was about at her limit for the night. "You heading out?" she asked.

Clark nodded as he laced up his second boot. "I need to take a walk to ease my troubled mind," he said with the slightest of wry smiles. It was their code phrase for "I need to go break the sound barrier," and Chloe nodded her understanding. Quietly, Clark maneuvered around the couch where his other friends sat watching the movie, clicked open the door, and stepped out.

Once in the hall, he forgave the elevator for the stairs, despite his location on the sixteenth floor of the building. He stepped into the stairway, and after closing the door, took a piercing glance up and down the stairwell as he listened for voices in the stairwell. Other than him, it was empty. Clark counted his blessings as he quickly leapt over the railing into the center area of the staircase's shaft – and plummeted straight down between the flights, his favorite way of descending these kinds of stairs. The sixteen stories went by all too quickly, and as he passed the second floor Clark reached out and grabbed the rung of one banister with his hand, swinging himself back into the staircase and landing on the linoleum with ease a couple yards from the first floor exit. He smiled as he stood up and nonchalantly stretched.

Ten seconds later, he was out of the dorm and onto the streets of the city, breathing in the lights and sounds. It was always beautiful, every time he saw it. But he felt like a change of scenery tonight. Clark glanced up at the sky, noting the heavy cloud cover from earlier hadn't dissipated yet, and frowned. He'd been hoping to fly aways and take in the view – it was a three-quarter moon tonight – but with could cover like that, the only way he'd see much down below was through the tint of his X-ray vision.

_So it looks like I'm gonna have to do this old school. That's okay. I don't mind stretching my legs._

He glanced up and down the block, waiting for a taxi to turn onto a side street and disappear from his line of sight, before kicking off into a blur of motion, heading uptown along 5th avenue at 450 miles an hour. Within seconds, he'd passed by the Empire State Building and the fancy stores of midtown before detouring into Central Park and following the roadways there northwards. At Harlem, he continued his northward progress, heading up past 125th street and continuing northwards. He leapt the Harlem River in a mighty bound, and headed into the Bronx, picking up speed as he went. As he entered Riverdale and found the traffic light enough to do so, he tore through the sound barrier, rattling windows along the roadside as he went. Once in Westchester, the countryside opened up enough for him to really let loose, and he rocketed up past Mach 5, his usual jogging speed, towards around 5,000 miles an hour – usually about as fast as he liked to run along windy country roads and through the woods. It wasn't until about fifty miles north of the city that he felt comfortable merging onto the highway. Traffic was all but nonexistent at one-thirty in the morning, and Clark let himself indulge in a couple bursts of "real speed" – bursts of velocity that brought him up into the range of speed usually reserved for objects escaping Earth's gravity. But for the most part, he just maintained a reasonable, normal running speed and just let his mind wander. He could do some of his best thinking while running, and it was here that he often deliberated on problems plaguing him, or worked on his latest piece of fiction. Tonight, he was planning out an idea for a movie that he'd been kicking around his head for a few days – a film based upon his own life back in Smallville. A story about an average guy living in a very odd town, filled with people with bizarre powers who he tries to stop from hurting people.

_And they all get their powers from the same source, some sort of alien artifact like the caves were…except this one poisons the town, as alien radioactive chemicals get into the water supply. And the hero can will have a love interest for a lot of romantic tension, and in the end of the movie, he can discover that his own life is due to the influence of the caves – that he was born because his parents were selected, or something…naw, that's retarded. But something along those lines. His existence has to be connected to the source of the problem. _

For the next fifteen minutes, Clark lost himself in thought as he ran along on autopilot, the countryside rolling past him barely noticeable as it became progressively flatter, and the trees became progressively more bare. Suddenly, Clark found himself coming up on a large body of water; surprised, he slowed to a stop at the water's edge, which he found was frozen. In fact, he realized as he glanced around, he'd been running on ice for as far back as he could see. A _chuff _rose up to his right, and he turned in surprise, only to watch as a polar bear, aroused from its slumber, shook the snow from its fur and began running off in the opposite direction.

Clark let out a sound that seemed like a _huh_ in his amusement at how far he'd run._ Shit. I really gotta watch where I'm going. _He turned back the way he'd come, about to start running back to the city – when he noticed the sky was clear. He smiled, and instead flew upwards into the sky. _Maybe I should figure out where I am first…_

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

"Indiana Jones."

Stefan Andreski nodded emphatically. "I swear, boss. He looked just like him. He had the hat, the jacket – "

Ivan Zapolev cut off his subordinate with a withering glare from across his giant desk. He wasn't used to not getting what he wanted – certainly not from his most trusted lieutenant – and he certainly didn't want to hear the story again about how a movie action hero smashed into an upper Manhattan whorehouse to ruin a perfectly good plan. Swallowing back his rage, he held up his hand and forced his voice to remain calm. "I'm sure he did. Most likely, a disguise to throw anyone attempting to track him down off the trail." He stroked his chin thoughtfully, as an idea began to form in his head. "Which means he's probably got something to hide. A family, friends, people he doesn't want getting involved. People who might have no idea of what he does."

"Stefan." The mobster's head perked up at the name. "Do you think you could recognize the man? If you saw him again?"

Stefan wasn't entirely sure, but he knew he'd rather lie now and figure out a way around it later than find himself on even shakier ground with his boss. Men had died for doing less to Zapolev than he'd done. "Of course."

"Good. Here's what we're going to do."

"Starting today," Zapolev went on, "we are going to spread word to every single part of this city that we want this man found. He is, most likely, the only person capable of performing these sorts of feats in this city, and if he really does have a Good Samaritan complex, he'll pop up again. Every person who brings us some piece of evidence that helps us determine who he is will be greatly rewarded. Once we figure out who he is…we make him pay for interfering in our affairs."

One of Zapolev's other lieutenants cleared his throat. "Why don't we just stage another kidnapping, force his hand?"

Zapolev waved the idea off like a floating feather. "The kidnapping was a mistake to begin with. We do it again, the police have a far better chance of figuring out who did it. Besides, our resources are spread thin enough as it is – if this fellow is truly capable of what you say he is –" Zapolev gave Stefan an icy glare – "then he could tear down our organization by the seams if he truly wanted to. We must take our time with this one. We have to let him reveal himself all on his own."

Zapolev smiled. "For when he does, it will make his pain all that much more profound in the end."

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_It's so beautiful from here, _Clark thought. _Everything looks so peaceful._

From his vantage point five hundred miles above the Eastern Seaboard, everything certainly seemed that way. In the silence of the vacuum, all Clark could hear was the gentle beating of his own heart. Before him, though, stretched out a vast array of lights, like incandescent spiderwebs across the coast. It seemed far too complex to have been made by man, and yet there was a strange precision, a structure to it, that ruled out any natural origin. It was one of the most beautiful things Clark had ever seen; he loved flying up to see it. Ever since the first time he'd seen it, he'd wished he could somehow take a girl up here to show it to her – but that was impossible, sadly enough.

_Unless I meet a girl like me, I guess I'll have to keep this to myself._ He thought back for a second. _Okay, unless I meet a girl like me who isn't psycho._

As Clark reminisced, his thought drifted back to the time when he'd run off under the influence of red kryptonite, in the summer between his sophomore and junior years in high school. He'd only been snapped from his drugged state when his dad had been given Kryptonian powers by his biological father, allowing Jonathan Kent to…reach his son. Clark had never asked his father about the period during which he had those superhuman powers, despite greatly wanting to. He wanted to know what it was like to go from feeling human all your life to suddenly being able to leap tall buildings. Clark wanted to know what it had felt like to find the powers he'd always known grafted onto your body, into your very cells. But most of all…he'd wanted to know what his dad did while he'd had those powers. Jonathan had gone to see Jor-El at eight-thirty p.m.; he finally intercepted Clark atop LuthorCorp at about twenty to midnight. Clark knew that it couldn't have taken his dad more than thirty minutes to go from Smallville to Metropolis, even being new to the powers. That missing two-and-a-half hours had nagged at the back of Clark's mind ever since he'd found out about the disparity. Did his father use the time to practice, to prepare for a fight he never thought he'd have to fight? Did he just run across the countryside at glorious speed, feeling the wind race over his face as he broke the sound barrier? Did he try and figure out any of Clark's other powers beyond the ones that came naturally, as the strength and speed did? Did he try and use X-ray vision, or heat vision? Did he figure out how to fly?

And if he did, what did he do? Is it possible that he did just what Clark was doing now, flying up above the atmosphere to gaze down on the world below?

Clark wasn't sure. _To be honest with myself, I don't think I'll ever find out. If he ever wants to tell me about it, he will. I'm not gonna push the issue._

Clark cast his gaze westward, towards Kansas. From his altitude, he had a clear line of sight directly to Smallville. Zooming in, he could see the abandoned LuthorCorp factory just outside of town; he could see Main Street, even read the GO CROWS! Banners posted above the roadway. He could see Lana Lang's old house, eight hundred yards as the crow flies from his barn. And he could see his own house, dark and peaceful. He shifted his eyes into higher spectra, and gazed through the walls until he could see his parents, fast asleep in their bed. For a moment, Clark just watched them sleep, watching their chests slowly rise and fall as they dreamed on. They looked like they were doing well. They were safe, and they always would be – so long as their son was watching over them.

Twelve hundred miles east and five hundred miles up, Clark Kent smiled gently as he blinked his gaze back to normal. The smile never left his face as he spun around and shot downwards, back into the atmosphere and into his everyday life.


	4. Beast

Sorry it's been so long in posting, everyone; I've been busy. Also sorry this chapter is so short. I intend to get around to more soon. Stay tuned!

Chapter 4

Autumn began to fade into winter, as the leaves on the trees in Central Park turned golden-brown and began to fall to the earth below. Temperatures began dropping; Clark knew this not as much from the sensations against his skin as the way that people dressed, spoke, and acted. He'd never known the bone-chilling cold that comes when the December wind whips down and tries to cut through your bones, just as he'd never known the fierce August sun as anything more than the source of his miraculous abilities. So it had always been with a sense of quiet interest that he'd watched people blow on their hands in the cold to warm them up, watched their cheeks grow rosy when the wind blew against them, listened to their teeth chatter and hear the cloth of their clothing vibrate as they shivered. There were times that he wondered, as anyone who's never experienced something, what it felt like to be cold like that. As a younger man – just a boy, really – he'd sometime wished to be human, so he could feel the pain and the heat and the cold that everyone else did, so that he could know what it was to get tired after a jog, so that he could know what his father felt when he strained to lift that fiftieth bale of hay of the day. That had lasted all the way until fifteen years old, when a freak accident temporarily ripped Clark of his powers and gave him a taste of what it was like to be at least physically human.

_Ever since then, not so much,_ he thought as he walked northwards towards his Friday internship.

So he stood tall in the face of the bitter Canadian wind, let it rip across his face as much as it cared to while other people looked away to save themselves the discomfort. He breathed it in deeply – even with the pollution here, it was still wonderful. The air in New York had always smelled different than that of anywhere else to his Kryptonian nose, and he loved it. As he faced into the wind, a part of him – the wanderlust, the part of him that had taken over his life for a year and sent him across the globe – begged him to break free of the bonds of gravity and leap into the air, faster and faster, to feel the wind grow stronger against his face. But he'd long since learned to temper his superhuman impulses; after all, it wouldn't be good to smash down a wall every time he lost his temper.

However, some superhuman traits were easier to control than others. His hearing was the hardest of them all; it was so hard not to overhear things when he could hear a man talk ten miles away. After all, there was no way to close his ears like he could his eyes. But that was as much a strength as it was a problem – the way it was right then.

In the drifting wind, Clark heard a cry for help, from somewhere to his west. A young woman, from the sound of it. Of course, he didn't have a choice. Glancing around quickly, he saw enough people around that a sudden leap to super-speed would certainly be noticed, so he ducked into a side alleyway, tucked his eyeglasses into the inside pocket of his coat, and kicked into high gear, carrying himself up onto the rooftops.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Stefan Andreski had been about halfway through his second Franklin Swicegood's pastrami-on-rye when a figure across the street caught his attention. He set down his copy of The New York Post and squinted into the light coming from outside. It was a young man – tall, and probably strong, judging by the way his thighs and calves filled out the legs of his jeans. Stefan had the strangest sensation he'd seen the man before, but he wasn't entirely sure where. But he was watching when the man seemed to stop and perk up, like a dog who'd heard a silent whistle. He was watching as the man glanced around nervously, all around him. He was watching as the young man ducked into an alleyway and pulled off his glasses.

And he was watching when the man disappeared.

The chunk of sandwich in his mouth fell to the plate, half-chewed in surprise. Stefan told himself that it couldn't have happened, that he must have been seeing things. Perhaps Franklin had put some tainted meat in his sandwich. No, Franklin might not have been Russian, but he was family – he'd been serving members of the Russian mob for twenty years, and with never a complaint.

Stefan abandoned the remains of his sandwich, his paper and his jacket and dashed out the door and across the street, almost being hit by a passing cab in the process. He barely noticed the fact that he'd come within two inches of death, his mind was so fixed on solving the puzzle in front of him. He jogged into the mouth of the alleyway – and stopped dead as he stared down to the brick wall at the end.

Nobody.

Stefan slowly reached into his trousers and pulled out his Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum revolver. A gift he'd "bought" for himself after finding it in a drug dealer's crackhouse seven years ago, he'd killed three people with it since that day. He'd even once shot a man through the leg with it – after the bullet had gone through a brick wall. It could stop just about anything known to man.

But he didn't know if what he was looking for was something known to man.

As he slowly advanced, gun extended, he thought back to his childhood in mother Russia, when his grandfather – who'd been one of the original Leninists, having met the "hero of the Soviet Union" several times – had spoken of his days on his family farm, when a mysterious beast had ravaged the lands for weeks. It first came one night in the spring, and slain a dozen cattle – every bull they'd had - with its razor-sharp talons. The next night, it had killed seventeen cattle; the night afterwards, it had finished the herd of 47. Strangely, it hadn't seemed to eat the beasts; from the strange pattern of wounds on the animals' flanks, it had seemed as though the beast was merely killing to cause its victims pain. The following night, his grandfather's family had prepared to make a last stand to save their horses and their remaining animals. They had called together their neighbors, gotten ever firearm they could find, and set a trap for the beast – three of one of their neighbors' bulls. Sometime around midnight, the beast had come. They hadn't seen it coming, nor heard it – but they'd known it was there. They could feel the fear creep up the back of their throats. Then the smell had come; like rotting flesh and sulfur, Stefan's grandfather had said. But they didn't hear a sound until one of the cattle screamed in pain. At the sound, one of the farmers had lit the trench filled with oil and wood they had dug around the cattle to illuminate it.

It was at this point Stefan's mother had always told his grandfather to stop, because Stefan wasn't old enough. It wasn't until he was thirteen that he'd finally managed to convince his grandfather, now well into his eighties, to describe the beast. He'd been worried that his grandfather's age would keep him from remembering the beast's features. His worries had been unfounded.

"_It was eight feet tall, at least," his grandfather had said, his eyes slipping into the past to see the terrible beast as clear as day. "A head shaped like a plow, the size of a cow's face. Two terrible, sharp red eyes that pierced into your soul and tried to tear it out. A body that bent in all the wrong places, like a man you see at the circus. Long, long arms, each one as long as my father was tall, and hands! Hands like nothing else. Threshing blades on each finger, a foot long, they were red, from the cow's blood. It had legs like a bird; they stuck out backwards, with two knees each, and each ended in three claws. But the worst of all was the mouth…it was an evil, evil mouth. It…smiled. Even through the teeth, like shark's teeth, it smiled. Not the way a lizard smiles, when it's mouth is always stuck like that. It looked straight into me, and its lips curled upwards for a second – and I wet myself."_

The night after hearing that story, Stefan had wet the bed for the first time in ten years.

But his grandfather's tale went on, he recalled as he slowly edged his way down the New York City alleyway. The sudden fire had startled the being; it had recoiled from the flames, bumping into one of the cattle as it scrambled backwards. His grandfather had recalled the god-awful screech the beast had made in that moment as "a thousand tea-kettles." But Stefan's grandfather was, if not a soldier yet in rank, then one in heart – he'd never wanted to be anything else. So his instincts had taken over; he'd aimed his rifle straight at the beast's heart, and felt his mind push away all the fear as he realized that he could stop the creature, here and now, and be a hero. An old Russian curse had gone through his mind in that moment, as the trigger had broken against his finger – and the beast's eyes had gone wide, as though it understood.

The shot rang out, straight and true…and took the bull inbetween the ribs.

One second, the beast had been there, the next second, it had been gone. Stefan's grandfather had hunted all sorts of game by that point in his life, and he knew when a shot was going to hit. He knew when that bullet would leave the chamber, and that once it did, he already knew if it would hit or miss. Every sense had told him that it would strike the beast.

But the beast had been gone.

Which meant it must have run away – быстрее чем ускоряющаяся пуля, his grandfather had said.

Faster than a speeding bullet.

Sweating profusely, Stefan kicked aside the last piece of cover in the alleyway with his finger half an inch from putting a bullet into whatever might be there. Nothing. He was at the end of the alleyway; he'd checked everything. The…man? Thing? That he'd seen, it was gone. He recalled that night in the whorehouse, with the man who'd caught the bullets out of the air. Faster than a speeding bullet.

He wondered, strangely, if he should stock up on oil torches.

But instead, he pulled out his cellular telephone – a cloned one, like all the ones he had – and dialed in a number he had memorized long ago.

"Zapolev? It is Stefan. I believe I may have nearly met our


End file.
